A conversation this weekend got me thinking about book-banning in America. This list on amazon.com purports to be of the 20 most challenged and banned books in the US. You can Google around. Other lists seem similar.

I haven't heard of most of these. They're children's books. Numero uno is called Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, which is a trilogy by a fellow called Alvin Schwartz. Its Wikipedia page cites the issues as being its "religious viewpoint and violence as well as for being occultist, satanic, or inappropriate."

Number two is Daddy's Roommate, with which Sarah Palin had a contentious history of some sort as we learned in 2008. Heather Has Two Mommies is on there too.

As I've told you previously, I was a young reporter when those books came out, in 1989, and were first proposed for introduction into New York City schools under the aegis of then-chancellor Joe Fernandez's cloyingly named "Rainbow Curriculum." All right, conservatives: sometimes I can see why liberals bug you. At any rate I still own pristine first-edition copies from those days. Depending on how things go in this country, they may really be worth something someday or they may land me in the hoosegow.

The only actual literature: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (3); Huck Finn (5); Of Mice and Men (6); Catcher in the Rye (10); The Color Purple (17). I would guess that at least Huck Finn and Mice and Men are the targets of campaigns from the identity politics left, for their respective liberal use of the n-word and the portrayal of Lennie. Did George end up killing Lennie? I don't even remember, but that seems to ring a bell. At any rate I was about 14 or 15, and it certainly didn't make me think that I should go out and crush mice in my pocket or kill people with mental disabilities.

What's allegedly offensive about The Color Purple? I never read it. Have you ever encountered such a "challenge" where you live?